Gratuitous spite against our nation's comics

The plan last night was to watch all four hours of The 100 Greatest Cartoons on Channel 4. Due to a scheduling malfunction, I found myself watching The Top 100 Ugliest Comedians.

For anyone who didn't stay up until midnight, here are the top 5.

5. Justin Lee Collins*
Yeah, the guy off Xfm.

4. Paul Tonkinson
Used to be on The Sunday Show if you remember that.

3. Rob Deering
Pork scratchings, anyone?

2. Simon Donald*
Like Simon Pegg but with all the bits of his face in the wrong place.

1. Rob Rouse
Irritating member of the Friday Night Project gang. He's the raddled one at the very front.

Your mileage may vary (ugliness is in the eye of the beholder after all), but you have to imagine them dumbly singing cartoon theme tunes and making twenty-year-old comments about Cheetara for the full effect.

I am of course not say that I look great myself. That's for other people to say.

*May not technically be a comedian, but Chicken Run isn't technically a cartoon.

The Fall of Centuari Prime

I've been watching Babylon 5 from the beginning on DVD and have reached the (excellent, I recall) fifth season episode The Fall of Centauri Prime. However, the Region 2 release is missing the pre-title sequence, a pretty vital component as it pays off the cliffhanger from the previous episode and sets up the following scene.

Trawling the net, I found that other people have reported this problem with the UK and Australian releases. It seems that three minutes were cut from the episode in a ham-fisted attempt to remove the "Previous on Babylon 5" sequence. No news yet of Warner making replacement discs available.

This is the second disappointment on "The Complete Fifth Season" set (aside from some of the actual episode content). The Corps is Mother, The Corps is Father when originally broadcast had a specially produced Psi Corps title sequence which has been replaced by the standard titles on the Region 2 release. The titles have been remastered once for each season and then put on all the episode of that season, regardless of any variations present in the original broadcast.

Queen to abandon hereditary principle?

Peter Black points out an article about Prince Charles on the <spit> Daily Mail website.

Meanwhile, new questions arose last night over the Queen's faith in Prince Charles's ability to succeed her and about her view of Mrs Parker Bowles.

According to Royal sources, she was 'having to do a lot of deep thinking' about Charles's future as King - with a suggestion that the best outcome for the Monarchy would be to skip a generation and for Prince William to be crowned instead.

In the unlikely event that the Queen really is considering this, she would be proposing a massive change to our constitution. In one move the Royal Family would declare that the hereditary principle doesn't work: that the oldest son of the monarch isn't, after all, the best person to be king. And once that is established, what justification is there for the hereditary principle to continue at all?

Little though I want to stand up for Prince Charles, I would question the public's support for Prince William to succeed the Queen. Prince William may not have said or done anything yet to turn the population against him, but he's only in his early twenties. If you'd asked people when Charles was William's age how they viewed him, he would have had a glowing report. Charles has alienated people but he has had more than fifty years to do so. For all we know, Prince Williams' views may be even more curious than his father's.

Genealogy

Thanks to a nifty package called phpGedView, I've been able to put my up-to-date family history research online. The new system should be easier to update than the many HTML files produced by Brother's Keeper as I only have to upload an exported GEDCOM file.

My genealogy site is at http://www.willhowells.org.uk/gen. At present I'm using one of the provided themes. When I have some spare time (so not for a while) I'll play with the design a bit. The phpGedView system allows me to set up users who can log in and see more detailed data - one of many features to try out in the future.

Linkfest

Just a bunch of stuff I've liked on the interweb today.

Index on Censorship reminds us the Prince Charles derided the Human Rights Act only to have his impending marriage rescued by it. His 2001 letter is on the Guardian site.

Cage of Monkeys reports possibly the last speech in the House of Commons from Labour MP Brian Sedgemore.

Have we all, individually and collectively, no shame? I suppose that once one has shown contempt for liberty by voting against it in the Lobby, it becomes easier to do it a second time and after that, a third time. Thus even Members of Parliament who claim to believe in human rights vote to destroy them.

(Via doctorvee.)

Via Metafilter, Desperate Houseflies.

Permalinks don't semm to be working at Honeytom as I type, but he's saved me a rant about Stephen Green and Christian Voice, those wacky funsters who think it's OK to intimidate a cancer charity. It's the February 24th entry and it's worth reading to the end so you can taste the irony.

Finally, opinionated music lovers could do worse than take part in Troubled Diva's "Which Decade is Tops for Pops?" Compare every song in the Top 10 with the corresponding from 1965, 1975, 1985 and 1995. The decade with the most votes wins. (Found via New York London Paris Munich.)

I'm walking in the air

Or at least I will be when I finally lose my grip walking on the snow and ice. I don't have great balance at the best of times but when there's ice on the pavements I'm pretty much guaranteed to fall over. Last time was during the cold snap in December, within seconds of walking out the front door.

It's been incredibly cold here and I still haven't bought any gloves. The campus is looking lovely - all snowcapped hills, sugar-dusted trees and sheets of white over the grassy areas. At lunchtime yesterday, two of my colleagues built a family of snow persons. There hasn't been a thaw and they're still there today, albeit augmented with eyes, noses (one each) and buttons down their fronts.

House arrest

I was planning to write a spiel about the government's dreadful plans for house arrest on the whim of the Home Secretary. However, since Chris Lightfoot has already said what I was planning to say, I'll suggest you read that instead.

The soundbites of the debate shown on TV last night were particularly dispiriting. I heard rhetoric about balancing civil liberties with national security and about Charles Clarke having a responsibility to defend us all from The Terrorists. But I didn't hear why house arrest (which he admitted wasn't needed at present) is the answer. Just saying "It's necessary" over and over doesn't make it any more true. He could have said "9pm curfews for all under-45s" or "CCTV in every home" and used exactly the same rhetoric that it would protect us.*

There are two questions I'd like Tony Blair to answer if he happens to log on today.

1. Given your argument, Tony, that the civil liberties that form our way of life must be limited in order to protect our way of life, which civil liberties do you consider too precious to ever consider restricting? Any at all?

2. Labour will, as usual, claim that anyone not supporting their proposals is helping the criminals/Terrorists/ne'er-do-wells. In order to safeguard this country's national security, would you therefore recommend voting for a pro-house arrest Tory if they are standing against an anti-house arrest Labour MP?*

*I'm aware these are somewhat facetious. Apologies.

LDYS Conference

Really good weekend away in Leeds, running LibDem Youth & Students spring conference, which seemed to go well.

Speakers included Richard Allan MP, who talked on identity cards. Having sat on the committee scrutinising the ID cards bill, Richard is particularly well informed on this issue and detailed numerous reasons why they are a terrible - and potentially problematic - waste of money. He even drew on Little Britain, suggesting that the fallibility of the biometric identity systems could, in the future, result in trying to access health services only to be told, "Computer says no." Richard proved once again that he'll leave a significant gap (and more than just geek-shaped hole) in the parliamentary party when he stands down at the election.

Other speakers included Andrew Stunnell MP (the party's chief whip in the Commons), Richard Stanforth of Oxfam talking about Make Poverty History (which LDYS is backing), and PPC's Jon Neal and Greg Mulholland. There were loads of new faces and we had key training to prepare everyone for the general election.

I used to be an elected sabbatical officer at Leeds University Union so it was also good to be back there holding a conference in a section of the union whose renovation I approved before leaving three years ago.

Save Star Trek?

Star Trek fans are fighting to save Enterprise.

They haven't realised that saving Enterprise isn't the same as saving Star Trek. Indeed, having watched Enterprise, you'd be forgiven for thinking that it was itself Star Trek's slow and painful death.

Save Star Trek. Put Enterprise out of my its misery.

(Also via Nick.)

Go on, write to them

FaxYourMP has been superseded by WriteToThem.com (currently in beta test). Enter your postcode and it will bring up all your elected representatives from district council level up to the European Parliament (although not parish councillors). You can then contact choose a representative and contact them for free.

(Via Nick Barlow.)

A new word

A work colleague gave me a printout of today's Edinburgh Evening News crossword. Having failed to make much progress when I tried the same paper's puzzle for the first time ealier in the week, I set to work on the cryptic clues (it's a double crossword - two puzzles, one quick and one cryptic, with different answers for each but on the same grid).

I was very chuffed as I completed it in one sitting, and I only had to check one word in a dictionary: sisal.

I wish it was special

"What am I doing here? I don't belong here." A thought that crossed my mind last night while at the cinema watching Creep.

It's a pretty run-of-the-mill horror film, with the gimmick that it's set in the London Underground (a setting previously used in the superior 1970s flick Death Line). The frights in Creep were standard turn-the-corner-and-there's-a-scary-man style, with some unpleasant operating theatre action to top up the gore score. There was an attempt at back story (without spelling it out patronisingly) but this ended up slowing the film down without satisfactorily explaining big chunks of the plot.

Despite a few good turns (notably Ken Campbell and Vas Blackwood), the cast were pretty mediocre, but worse were the characters. The Scottish junkie was a walking stereotype and the lead, Kate, was incredibly stupid to the point that she became impossible to empathise with. Each time she had opportunities to finish off the monster-villain-creature, she let them pass and reverted to running through tunnels while panting. It's made clear that Kate has no change and this means she can't use the public telephone. (At least this is how I read it - if it was supposed to be out of order, it didn't come across.) But in her desperate situation she doesn't reverse charges, pay by credit card or dial 999. And at no point did she set off the fire alarm on the platform, surely the easiest way to attract attention.

I tried to forgive the film what I saw as its first requirement for me to suspend my disbelief: I wasn't convinced by Kate's falling asleep on the station platform. I put this to one side, since it was an essential conceit for the rest of the story to work, but there were too many other occasions subsequently that infuriated me. There are plot holes you could drive a tube train through, not least how a bloodthirsty creature who appears to have been in the tunnels for years has survived and why such a killing spree hasn't (presumably) occurred before in all that time.

Creep, like to many horror films, has a weak story but passes the time - in this case, too much time.

So I'm a Philistine

One of yesterday's Guardian crossword clues had me stumped (well, most of them did, but there is a point this...). The clue was, roughly, "Fifth-rate celebrities around (for instance) John Donne (7)." I resorted eventually to Googling "John Donne" since I had no idea who he was. The first result revealed him to be a poet. Another result contained one of his works which, given the title of this blog, I really should have known:

No man is an island, entire of itself
every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main
if a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were,
as well as if a manor of thy friends or of thine own were
any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind
and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls
it tolls for thee.

Thanks to this info about him, I did manage to work out the answer. "Fifth-rate celebrities" is "E-list" and "for instance" is "e.g." which together give John Donne himself: elegist.

The Backbencher

I've just been alerted to the happy news that I'm in today's Guardian Backbencher. Last week, she asked for alternatives to the newly-announced EU referendum question ("Should the United Kingdom approve the treaty establishing a constitution for the European Union?"). I obliged...

WHEN TWO WRONGS DON'T MAKE A RIGHT

Thanks to the countless readers who sent in their alternative questions for the referendum on the EU constitution. "Europe - Yes or No?" wasn't quite what the Backbencher had in mind, though it does have a certain terrifying simplicity. But the winner is Will Howells with this: "Should the United Kingdom reject the treaty establishing a constitution for the European Union?" "That'll confuse the No campaign," he explains.

Hockney's "moral obligation"

I didn't pass judgment on whether Damian Hockney should stand down from the London Assembly when I wrote about his defection. However, UKIPwatch relays a good case, if true, for him to stand aside:

A UKIP spokesman said that in 2003, Mr Hockney had proposed a motion, passed by the party's National Executive Committee, requiring any successful UKIP election candidate who later left the party to resign their seat.

'UKIP asserts that Mr Hockney has a moral obligation, if not a legal one, to adhere to a rule which he himself was a vocal advocate of,' said the spokesman.

Kat Fletcher interview

Interesting interview in the Guardian today with Kat Fletcher, President of the National Union of Students, who I was at uni with. Our politics differ somewhat (although she once told me I seemed more left wing every time she saw me) but I was pleased for her when she finally took the presidency having been pipped at the post by Labour's Mandy Telford the previous year.

I see the Guardian site also has a copy of the new guidelines for dealing with intruders in the home. This is an unrelated point.